Venezuela Cops in Custody After Killing One of Their Own

Four police officers have been arrested on charges of killing one of their own for motives that remain as much of a mystery as their identities.

Three of the officers hail from the scientific and investigative police, Cicpc, the hard crime tough guys at Venezuela's equivalent of the FBI. The fourth belongs to the Metropolitan Police in the capital, as did the victim. So far, he's the only one whose name has emerged in the public domain. Interior and Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami identified him as Jean Carlos Obsipo García, 23, who'd been on the force for three years.

However, the minister declined to name the four accused. This is highly unusual in Venezuela, where cops and officials have a tendency to feed the media lots of details once somebody's been taken in, and hang the consequences for a fair trial. Presumably, this unconventional silence had something to do with embarrassment about the case, which Cicpc is under orders to investigate. In the meantime, details are leaking out, anyway.

Obispo García is said to have been outside his home chatting and drinking with friends last Sunday evening when a Toyota truck drove up. Somebody inside the vehicle fired several shots at the officer, who fell to the ground wounded. It was at this point that the assailants revealed themselves as police officers. On being informed that so was their victim, too, they were persuaded to take him to a hospital in east Caracas.
Arriving there, they ran into a group of other Metropolitan officers who were on guard duty and had heard about the shooting. Some sort of spat ensued, which only ended when the suspects were handed over to Commissioner Jesús Urbina, the inspector general of Cicpc. Since then, their whereabouts remain unclear.

Carlos Nadales, a fellow Metropolitan officer and friend of Obispo García, said: "This is lamentable because we all have one end in mind, which is to combat crime. These confrontations only benefit the criminals." El Aissami commented that the suspect officers had been involved in what he described as "bad police practice."